Funny thing happened a few months back. A guy named Joe Miller called from Alaska and wanted to know if I wanted to sell this domain name. After all, he said, it looked like I wasn’t doing much with it. Well, he was right about that, and I do get contacted a couple of times a year by guys named Joe Miller who want to know if I want to sell the site. I always tell them “no”. I latched onto it in the early days of the internet, and once I sell it, I would never get it back.
The story gets interesting when he says he is willing to offer “several thousand dollars for it”. Oh, well, now that’s different. I told him I would think about it while on a trip to Mexico and let him know. He called from Alaska the day I got back and was really leaning on me, telling me why he wanted the site. He is a lawyer and was planning a run for the US Senate and wanted the site because it already had name recognition and he wanted the .com vs. the .us that he now has.
His offer of “several thousand dollars” changed over the next few days as he kept going lower and lower with his offers, telling me it wasn’t worth much. He kept e-mailing with different reasons why he couldn’t pay “several thousand dollars”. Why hell, I didn’t want to sell it in the first place. My opinion of the guy was that he was really not a very good negotiator and we ended up with no deal and I was sort of upset at myself for wasting all that back-and-forth time with someone who turned out to be full of wind.
I forgot about the whole thing until recently, when indeed, Joe Miller, the lawyer from Alaska, made national news by upsetting incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary by about 2,000 votes. I had Googled him early on, wanting to know who I was dealing with, so I already knew that he had no political experience. For a West Point and Yale grad, he didn’t strike me as the “sharpest tool in the shed”, as they say. When I found out that he had been endorsed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, I realized how he had managed to win an election. Now, after reading some of his comments and the comments of Alaskan’s who don’t care much for his politics, I can understand why this guy may be a good example of where we are as a country and how we “choose” who will represent us. Anybody with enough money behind them can get shoved inside the Beltway.
I live in Texas, far away from Alaska and their politics, and this election would not have even shown up on my radar had Joe Miller and I not shared the same name. As I did a little research, I found this site http://www.themudflats.net/ and have learned a lot about this senatorial hopeful. It’s some pretty interesting stuff, albeit a little one-sided. I tend to believe most of it, after having had some dealings with the Alaskan Joe Miller.
Now that Lisa Murkowski (she swears people will be able to spell it) has announced a write-in campaign, things will get interesting in Alaska. The Tea Party folks say they’ll head back up to Alaska and pump as much moolah as needed to get Joe over the top. On the other hand, Murkowski may split the Republican/Independent vote enough to put Democratic candidate Scott McAdams, former mayor of Sitka, Alaska in the driver’s seat. At least Murkowski and McAdams have held some political office, as opposed to Joe Miller, the lawyer from Anchorage (by way of Kansas!).
I don’t normally write about politics, but do engage in conversations with friends about issues affecting us all. I do believe that two wars we’re fighting are helping to drag down our economy. I mean, don’t we have something like eleven carrier fleets? How much does it cost to keep just one of those running for a day? How much fuel is burned by all those ships and planes? How much more finely can we pulverize the dust that is now Afghanistan? They are, what, the fourth poorest country in the world? There is no “win” in either Iraq or Afghanistan, as far as I can tell.
Since I was on a…ahem…first name basis with Joe Miller the candidate, I sent him an e-mail asking him his position on military spending and how he sees us getting out of those two war-torn countries. Given his military background (he was awarded a Bronze Star as a lieutenant in the first Gulf War), surely he has something worthwhile to contribute to the conversation. So far, I haven’t heard back from him. Granted, he is a much busier guy now.
I guess Joe Miller, the candidate for US Senate, either a) has no opinion that he would like to share, or b) considers it unworthy of his time to write a note to the little guy in Texas who spent the better part of two weeks last spring conversing on another topic.
That’s unfortunate. I really want to like the guy. I want us to send people to Washington with some backbone and who don’t just play party politics. I’m afraid that this will not be a case of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but Mr. Miller Goes to Washington. While Jimmy Stewart played a part that gave all Americans hope, don’t count on it from “the other” Joe Miller.
Best of luck to the fine folks of Alaska and most of all, educate yourself about the issues and get out to vote!